Some comments from inside X-rite.
Some comments from inside X-rite.
- Subject: Some comments from inside X-rite.
- From: Tom Lianza <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 22:04:30 -0400
- Thread-topic: Some comments from inside X-rite.
Hi to all,
> If I were X
> Rite I would give Tom Lianza of the ICC an open fund to meet with Apple and
> Adobe and others to get back on the stick with proper support for ICC at
> the application and OS level.
Since my name was mentioned I thought it would be good to set record
straight.
First. With respect to my interaction with the market place or any other
technical group within the industry, I have been completely free to go where
I want, say what I want and do what I want. X-rite management has been
completely supportive of any activity that I felt would better the company
or the industry. I speak with folks at Adobe and I have another member of
the staff working closely with Apple on a number of issues that concern
everyone on this list, both as Co Chair of the ICC and an X-rite employee.
The CTO would die laughing if someone suggested that I had some sort of
managerial "leash". I don't have an "open fund", but no one has ever said
"no" to a rational request from me.
Second.
>Let's not research any fancy new ICC
> implementations until we can get back to the functionality we had years ago.
There are real technical issues that the current specification and workflow
do not address. Some are long term, others are near term. The current
specification is sealed with ISO and it doesn't make sense to make major
changes given the current implementation state. As Chair of the ICC, I
bifurcated the problem into legacy management and a move towards an Open
Source solution that did not rely upon the Platform Vendors to provide the
CMM. Once again, X-rite management has been completely supportive of this
trend towards what I call "viral infrastructure". X-rite can't develop every
product or end-user solution. We have worked with the industry to provide
an open color exchange CxF3 which is winding its way through ISO hell. As
we saw from the RIP developers, really smart people can build products
around our products( and other competitive solutions) that in some cases
exceed our ability to provide truly competitive solutions. That is a market
reality.
Third:
Product obsolescence and support of legacy products. Our products are, in
general, very long lived, if they make it to full market maturity. At the
time of the acquisition, some products got axed. Those were tough decisions
that needed to get made. If you don't agree with them, I can only say that
is what history is all about. If anything, we let products live too long
and this fills the support pipe with many legacy issues. Our biggest
challenge is dealing with OS variants. There are six basic Windows variants
(XP, Vista, Win7, 32 and 64 bit). If you add graphic card/driver issues for
ddc, a typical MINIMAL test cycle requires over 100 different physsical
configuration tests + language variations. The mac is an easier situation,
but the "feature creep" has a real impact on our market place. Our USB
drivers and configurations must move with the industry as well. In a typical
beta cycle, we get 100's of bugs, big and small, plus workflow comments and
feature requests. Sometimes, we misjudge the consumer demand for a feature.
Sometimes we don't message the intended audience for a product as well as we
should and we end up having higher expectations on the part of certain
users. That is a market reality.
Fourth:
We have eyes on this list and we do discuss the comments on this list.
Please don't presume to know what goes on inside X-rite. We all have our
opinions (inside and outside the company) about what we should be doing, but
in the end we need to balance the needs of the customers and shareholders.
It's a real difficult balance. And yes, sometimes we make mistakes.
Finally, "Tyler Boley" <email@hidden> wrote:
> So I'm wondering now, if there are many here with extensive and in depth
> use of the software. We now know everyone's thoughts on Xrite corporate
> culture and everyone's thoughts on what they should have done... but the
> rest of us are stuck with making this thing work as it came out with
> very few remaining viable options. I'll try the following-
> Anyone have it report "unable" generate a profile and have any idea why
> or how to work around? Anyone have strange behavior in Colorthink
> displaying curves, black point, or nonsensical 3d gamut shapes? Anyone
> find discrepancies between Colorthink reported gamut volumes and Monaco
> Gamutworks reported gamut volumes? Anyone using CMYKOG at all, and
> finding the O and G separation user settings working at all? Anyone
> getting Photoshop to recognize CMYK+ profiles in the advanced "convert
> to" dialogue? Anyone finding optimal chart sizes for both 1st and
> optimized builds, given the assumption there will be an optimization?
> There's more... is this the place to ask?
> Seems to me with some concerted effort this thing could be invaluable in
> a shrinking toolbox, maybe they'd take some positive part in these kinds
> of discussions, or at least pay attention.
> Thanks,
> Tyler
Thank you Tyler, That is the feed back we would like to see. If a question
is asked in a rational fashion, we can try to respond intelligently. We
can't respond to irresponsible rants based upon assumed corporate
indifference or direct corporate mis-direction. My only request would be to
contact our first line support, before casting the problem to the list. It
will make it up the chain, but it may take time.
Thank you all,
Tom Lianza
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